- The `controller.kubernetes.io/pod-deletion-cost` annotation can be set to offer a hint on the cost of deleting a `Pod` compared to other pods belonging to the same ReplicaSet. Pods with lower deletion cost are deleted first. This is an alpha feature. ([#99163](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/99163), [@ahg-g](https://github.com/ahg-g))

### Other (Cleanup or Flake)

    * replicas, readyReplicas, currentReplicas, and updatedReplicas. The semantics of replicas is now consistent with DaemonSet and ReplicaSet, and readyReplicas has the semantics that replicas did prior to this release.

- The metric `apiserver_flowcontrol_request_concurrency_limit` has been deprecated and will be removed in a future release.  It is a duplicate of `apiserver_flowcontrol_nominal_limit_seats` (introduced in release 1.26) but has an outdated name and had an outdated HELP string. ([#118959](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/118959), [@MikeSpreitzer](https://github.com/MikeSpreitzer))...

## Changes by Kind

### API Change

- Make STS available replicas optional again, ([#109241](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/109241), [@ravisantoshgudimetla](https://github.com/ravisantoshgudimetla)) [SIG API Machinery and Apps]
- Make STS available replicas optional again. ([#113122](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/113122), [@ashrayjain](https://github.com/ashrayjain)) [SIG Apps]

- Manual change of a failed job condition status to False does not result in duplicate conditions ([#110292](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/110292), [@mimowo](https://github.com/mimowo)) [SIG Apps]
- OpenAPI will no longer duplicate these schemas:
  - io.k8s.apimachinery.pkg.apis.meta.v1.DeleteOptions_v2
  - io.k8s.apimachinery.pkg.apis.meta.v1.ObjectMeta_v2

- Kubeadm: improve the strict parsing of user YAML/JSON configuration files. Next to printing warnings for unknown and duplicate fields (current state), also print warnings for fields with incorrect case sensitivity - e.g. `controlPlaneEndpoint` (valid), `ControlPlaneEndpoint` (invalid). Instead of only printing warnings during `init` and `join` also print warnings when downloading...

- Track ownership of scale subresource for all scalable resources i.e. Deployment, ReplicaSet, StatefulSet, ReplicationController, and Custom Resources. ([#98377](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/98377), [@nodo](https://github.com/nodo)) [SIG API Machinery and Testing]

### Feature

  - A `create` or `update` API request with duplicate items in a keyed list no longer wipes out managedFields. Examples include env var entries with the same name, or port entries with the same containerPort in a pod spec.

- Fixed an EndpointSlice Controller hashing bug that could cause EndpointSlices to incorrectly handle Pods with duplicate IP addresses. For example this could happen when a new Pod reused an IP that was also assigned to a Pod in a completed state. ([#115907](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/115907), [@qinqon](https://github.com/qinqon)) [SIG Apps and Network]...